Linguistic justice in higher education

• In Event: Reimagining Professional Development of Critical Pedagogy and Humanizing Teaching & Learning in the Humanities

Proposal

Drawing upon scholarship related to dominant linguistic ideologies marginalize and disempower groups from disregarded linguistic communities, Moghaddam argues that highly specialized academic language and Jargonism employed within social sciences and humanities form a mode of knowledge production that becomes exclusionary to a group of people and reproduces social relations rather than accessible knowledge. Through an auto-ethnographic research, building on her own experience as a doctoral student and an adjunct teaching to undergraduate students at the CUNY, Moghaddam discusses how to make the more inclusive classes that empowers those marginalized students as the very agents to act toward social justice in the ways to enhance humanity.

References

Phillipson, Robert. (1988). Linguicism: Structures and ideologies in linguistic imperialism. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas & J. Cummins (Eds.), Minority education: From shame to struggle (pp. 339-358). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude. (1990a). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Theory, Culture and Society Series) 2e. London: Sage. (First published in French in 1970 as: La Reproduction. Éléments pour une théorie du système d’enseignement. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit) and in English in 1977.

Author

• Mehrnaz Moghaddam, The Graduate Center, City University of New York